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Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:54:56 +0000 en-GB
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1 Baby born in China four years after parents’ deathhttps://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/63286/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=bioethics&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=bioethics&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=bioethics
https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/63286/?talkThu, 12 Apr 2018 13:34:28 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=63286A baby has been born four years after its parents died in a car accident, Chinese media reports. The couple had frozen several embryos in the hope of having a child through IVF. The baby was born to a surrogate from Laos on December 9, after years of battles between the court and his grandparents […]]]>

A baby has been born four years after its parents died in a car accident, Chinese media reports. The couple had frozen several embryos in the hope of having a child through IVF. The baby was born to a surrogate from Laos on December 9, after years of battles between the court and his grandparents over the frozen embryos.

According to the Beijing News, husband and wife Shen Jie and Liu Xi were planning in vitro fertilization but died in a car crash in March 2013, just five days before the scheduled transplant. The late couple’s parents filed two lawsuits to use the embryos, which were stored at a hospital in Nanjing, in eastern China.

There was no legal precedent for custody of frozen embryos should the parents die. The first lawsuit was unsuccessful, with the court deeming that fertilized embryos “cannot be transferred or inherited” (Beijing News), but the second one granted the families custody. Surrogacy is illegal in China so the future grandparents drove to Laos to find a surrogate mother.

The case raises complex juridical and ethical questions caused by medical advances. China is not the only country which has had to rule on such issues: Australia faced a similar case in 1983 when a couple who had left frozen embryos at a clinic in Melbourne died in a plane crash, prompting a dispute over whether the eggs could be regarded as heirs.